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20 most popular Julia Gillard vs Kevin Rudd tweets

No matter what happens in this morning’s ballot over the leadership of the Labor party and the country, it’s clear that Kevin Rudd decisively won last week’s “vote” of popularity on Twitter.

Rudd featured three times in the top 20 most popular tweets about Labor’s leadership’s crisis, with a message about his resignation as foreign minister coming in at number one.

Some tweeps are clearly not taking this leadership battle seriously Source: @absolut_todd

Rudd’s resignation message was retweeted more than 1000 times, according to data compiled by social news site The Wall.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard came in 7th, with a tweet announcing this morning’s ballot. That tweet garnered more than 400 retweets.

The remainder of the most retweeted Gillard vs Rudd messages from the last week were representative of a typical Twitter conversation: a mix of jokes, breaking news, insights and more jokes.

Only the hater tweets were missing, but those sort of messages are not usually retweeted as frequently.

My favourite is a gag from ABC reporter Annabel Crabb from two days before Rudd declared open warfare by resigning his post: “You have to admire Kevin Rudd’s attention to detail. Continuing a Mexican standoff, actually IN MEXICO … respect.”

Rudd also beat Gillard in mentions of his name and his Twitter account.

The keyword “Rudd” was used almost twice as much as “Gillard” by tweeps around the country.

Australia tweeters also mentioned Rudd’s twitter account, “@kruddmp“, almost three times as much as Gillard’s account “@juliagillard“.